Roddam Narasimha Bids Adieu at 87, Leaving Behind his Notable Work

Renowned aerospace scientist and Padma Vibhushan awardee Roddam Narasimha passed here on Monday at a private hospital at the age of 87. He suffered a brain hemorrhage and was admitted to the hospital on December 8. Dr. Sunil V Furtado, neurosurgeon and senior consultant at the Ramaiah Memorial Hospital had stated that Roddan was brought in a critical condition to the hospital and he also had a certain heart related-ailment and had suffered a brain stroke in 2018 as well.

Early Life of Roddam Narasimhaiah
Roddam was born to a Physics professor R.L. Narasimhaiah in a small village in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh on July 20, 1933. He grew up to be an engineer earning mechanical engineering from Visvesvaraya College of Engineering in Bangalore. During his college days, his visit to Tata Institute and the view of Spitfire aircraft drew his attention and ignited his passion for Aeronautical study. Later he went on to pursue his master's in engineering from the Indian Institute of Science. Post which he left for the United States to complete his doctorate under Hans Liepmann at the California Institute of Technology.

Career Growth
In 1962, Roddam joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and was associated with the Department of Aerospace Engineering in various capacities until 1999. However, in 1982, he established the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences (now Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences), which was under his governance until 1989. He was the Director of the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) from 1984 to 1993. For many years he held a visiting position at Caltech as the Clark B Millikan Professor and Sherman Fairchild distinguished scholar. Between 1989 and 1990 he was the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University in England.

Roddam served as the Director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) between 1997 and 2004. His research had focused on Aerospace Fluid dynamics and its related problems in the atmosphere. Post that He studied transitions between laminar flow and turbulent flow, the structure of shock waves, various characteristics of fully developed turbulent flow, the fluid dynamics of clouds, near-surface temperature distributions, and eddy fluxes in atmospheric boundary layers. Furthermore, Roddam had also been closely connected with aerospace technology development in India at both technical and policy-making levels. During 1977 and 1979, he held the Chief Project Coordinator role at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

In February 2012, he quit his post as the longest-serving member of the Indian Space Commission in protest at the blacklisting of three former ISRO technocrats that include G. Madhavan Nair, former ISRO chairman, for their perceived role in a controversial agreement of 2005.

Awards & Honours
The honorable scientist had obtained numerous awards which is quite hard to pen, hence are few prominent awards are listed below.
In 2008 Roddam was awarded the Trieste Science Prize by TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world. He was also an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

However, his prominent Indian awards include Bhatnagar Prize and the Gujarmal Modi Award. He was a Notable Alumnus of both Caltech and IISc. In 2000 he won the Fluid Dynamics Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. While in 2009, he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2nd Science and Technology Congress, organized by the Gulbarga University and the Science and Technology Academy on the university's campus. Later in 1987, he was honored with the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan in 2013.

Roddam has penned down more than 200 research publications and 15 books. . Orifice Flow at High Knudsen Numbers, Effect of Longitudinal Surface Curvature on Boundary Layers, Collisionless Expansion of Gases Into Vacuum, Developments in Fluid Mechanics and Space Technology: Asian Congress of Fluid Mechanics, Vijnaana Samskriti, The Dynamics of Technology: Creation and Diffusion of Skills and Knowledge, are his few prominent works.